One Night With You (24 page)

“I won't wander off like that again,” she said, “unless I tell someone where I'm going. I wanted to sit by the river, and I thought I remembered the way.”

“You're here with us now,” Arnold said, “and that's what matters.”

Philip raised his glass. “Yes, indeed. That's behind us now, thank God.”

At dinner, no one seemed to have a hearty appetite. It was as if their fears for Kendra's safety had depleted the energy needed for consuming and digesting food. Kendra suspected that hunger would attack her later, so she forced herself to eat. As he finished toying with dessert, eating little of it, Reid looked at her with a question in his eyes that she could not misunderstand.

She stood. “I'm wrung out. I think I'll call it a night.”

“Wait for me,” Reid said.

“What time are you leaving tomorrow?” Philip asked Reid.

“Shortly after twelve or thereabouts,” he replied, his tone suggesting the vagueness of his words. But anyone familiar with Reid knew that his thoughts were not on Philip's question, but on Kendra.

“There are a couple of bottles of white burgundy open over there,” Philip said, pointing to the bar. “Take one with you.”

Reid's face bore a half smile. How refreshing to be back among friends who neither postured nor pretended with each other! “Thanks, friend,” he said, effectively admitting that sleep would not be his first order of business. He wrapped the bottle in a white towel, picked up two wineglasses and said, “Good night, all.”

“I'm not leaving you tonight,” he said to Kendra when they reached her door. “Not unless you put me out, and then I'll go kicking and screaming.”

She opened the door, took his arm and walked in. “If you leave me, I'll have a very hard time forgiving you.”

Eventually, he would demand to know why she had wandered off alone without telling him or anyone else where she intended to go, but she knew he wouldn't do that tonight. She opened her arms to him and hours later when, still locked inside her, he remembered the wine; it had reached room temperature and was too warm to drink.

“Come back any time,” Philip told Reid as they prepared to leave just before one o'clock Sunday afternoon. “I confess it gets dull here when we don't have guests. Claudine will be here next weekend.”

“I was surprised that you didn't have plans with her this weekend,” Reid said.

“We would have been together either here or at her place, but she had an opportunity to attend a retreat for teachers of handicapped children. She has two handicapped kids in one of her classes, so I encouraged her to go.”

“So it's still on,” Reid said.

Philip stuffed his hands into his pockets and grinned. “Indeed it is.”

Reid embraced his friends and headed back to Queenstown, but one question haunted him. “Are you going to tell me what made you so morose all day yesterday and why you needed to be alone? I figure you had to sort out things because you didn't invite me to go with you. I need the answer to this, Kendra.”

She remained silent for a while, evidently formulating her answer, for she knew he would weigh every word she said. “I went to sleep happier than I had ever been, feeling that I had in you the love I've always needed and dreamed of but which, until now, always eluded me.

“I had it in the palm of my hand, and I was so happy that I could hardly contain my feelings. And then thoughts about the facts of our lives—yours and mine—intruded, crowding out all else. I thought of unsettled problems that can split us up, and I saw this wonderful love slipping through my fingers.

“Yes, I saw a fifty-fifty chance that what you and I are facing can wreck us, and as I've done for years, I tried to think, to reason and analyze my way out of our entanglements. But the more I reasoned, the more I despaired. You know the rest.”

He drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “And after last night, do you still believe anything can separate us?”

She leaned her head against the headrest, closed her eyes, and he could hardly breathe while he waited for her answer. “I know that nothing can make me stop loving you, but that's all I do know.”

He slowed down and tried to shake off the words that had come to him like a blow on the head.
Better be careful here,
he told himself.

“It'll take me a while to digest that,” he told her. “It's what you didn't say and what you probably are not going to say that's bothering me.”

Kendra arose early Monday morning, went to her bedroom window to gaze at the Albemarle Sound and inhaled the fresh salty air. It seemed that each time she reached a new high with Reid, a letdown followed. When they had arrived home the previous evening after their weekend at Dickerson Estates, Reid didn't suggest that they prolong the evening. She wouldn't say he was withdrawn, but he was more pensive than she'd ever seen him. While she stood at the window, still wearing the teddy in which she slept, a burst of wind reminded her of her isolation in the dark woods adjoining the Dickerson Estates and of that minute when she was at last safe in Reid's arms.

“I can't let him out of my life,” she said aloud. “Because of him, I'm a different woman, ripe with life and living. He's everything to me. I'll find a way. I have to.”

She dressed, drank a cup of coffee and headed for work. As she turned the corner into Albemarle Heights, she nearly collided with Myrna.

“You're not driving today?” Myrna asked her.

“I don't drive to work,” Kendra told her, aware that the woman knew who she was, what she did and where she worked. “Have a great day.” She didn't want to walk along with Myrna, so she crossed the street, hoping that the woman wouldn't have the temerity to cross with her.

“'Morning, ma'am,” Carl Running Moon Howard said as she walked into her chambers. “Have I got a dilly for
you!
A group called CFSL, Citizens for the Sacred Lands, have managed to bring suit against Brown and Worley, and it's on your docket for next Monday.”

She gripped the back of her desk chair. “What did you say?” He repeated it.

“But doesn't the county clerk know that I moved out of Albemarle Gates?”

“Yes, ma'am, but Brown and Worley said you moved because of some problem with the house's structure, and that it was amicably settled. Their lawyer accepted you as trial judge without reservation.”

“Thanks. Let me see the papers on it.”

The case could tie up the court for weeks, and Reid would wait that much longer to clear his name. Life could be rough. As soon as she walked into her house after work that day, she called Reid. “Where are you?” she asked him.

“Home. I walked into my apartment ten minutes ago.”

“I have some news that will interest you,” she said.

“Good or bad.”

“Time will tell. Right now, it's probably more good than bad. Where can we get together?”

“I can always walk over there.”

“Good. See you in a few minutes.” She made coffee, put some frozen hot cross buns in the oven and waited. As soon as she sat down and began to read the case of CFSL against Brown and Worley, she heard his knock and got up slowly, wondering how he would greet her.

He stared down at her for a minute, then locked her to his sweet and wonderful body and let his tongue find its home inside her mouth. It was she who broke the kiss. She took his hand and walked with him into the kitchen.

“Want some coffee?”

“Don't I always? I was about to make a cup of instant when the phone rang. What's the news?”

She poured the coffee into mugs, added milk to Reid's cup, removed the hot cross buns from the oven and put a plate of them on the table, all the while gaining time in which to frame her thoughts. She sat down, sipped the coffee, which she discovered that she didn't want, reached across the table and caressed his jaw.

“A citizen's group is suing Brown and Worley to stop them from building on those sacred lands across from the park. The case comes to court next Monday.”

“Sounds good to me. What could be bad about it?”

“I don't know yet. I'm the judge.”

“But how? You had a settlement with them over your house.”

“Their lawyer told the county clerk that it was an amicable settlement, that I dealt fairly and that I was acceptable as judge for the case. Frankly, I'd rather not have anything to do with it.”

“How long do you think the case will last?”

“That depends on the number of witnesses, and how long it takes to get together a jury. I'm concerned that this case will cause yours to be postponed.”

“I certainly hope not. So much is riding on the outcome. I want it to be over as soon as possible.”

“So do I.” She passed the plate of hot cross buns to him.

“If you have any more buns for yourself,” he said, “I'd like to take these home with me. I'll be up in Edenton all day tomorrow, and they'll come in handy.”

“You'll be working there every day now?”

He nodded. “I'm my own man again with my own business and my own office. I have to find an office assistant, someone who'll serve as secretary, office assistant and girl Friday.”

She cocked an eye and regarded him with a measure of skepticism. “Be sure that's all she serves as.”

His features arranged themselves into a bright smile, displaying his charm and the sultriness that could make her heart palpitate. Then the smile disappeared. “At first I thought you were joking, but you haven't smiled. You're serious, aren't you?”

“If I appear serious, I'm serious. As I was on my way to work this morning, I encountered Myrna. She wanted to talk, but I got rid of her by crossing to the other side of the street.”

“It wouldn't surprise me if she tried to make friends with you. Myrna's devious. I'd hoped that she'd given up and left Queenstown.”

“As long as you're unattached, she'll think she has a chance, and she'll stay right here.”

“She must believe in miracles,” Reid said.

They talked for more than an hour, and at times she thought the tension between them would rise to a boiling point. He would stop talking in midsentence and stare at her not remembering what he had intended to say; his gaze would seem permanently focused on her breasts, and he would actually shake his body to free himself from their grip on him. Once, his eyes narrowed when she dampened her lips, though she hadn't done it as an act of seduction.

“I'd invite you to dinner,” he said at last, “but after eating three of these buns, I won't be hungry for another hour and a half.” He stood, leaned over her and bathed her lips with his tongue. She parted them and took him in, though she knew he hadn't intended to give her that pleasure. She wrapped six buns and walked with him to her back door.

“Let me know when you get over your annoyance with me. I'm getting tired of it,” she told him.

“I imagine you are. I'll call you when I get in tomorrow,” he said. “Tonight, I want to look over the contract Jack sent me.” He kissed her quickly on the mouth and left.

When he gets ready, he'll tell me what the problem is,
she told herself.
Who am I kidding? I know what I told him as we were driving home Sunday, and he's trying to protect himself from probable pain. But what's done is done. If he thought it inappropriate for me to judge CFSL versus Brown and Worley, shouldn't he question the propriety of my judging his case against anybody? There is no way I can be unbiased in that case against him, because my future depends on it.

She made a shrimp salad sandwich, ate it and returned to her study of the case that she knew could attract national attention. She had no sympathy for Brown and Worley because they had deliberately bought the properties long held to be Native American gravesites, properties that were vacant only because other developers had shied away from them. Thus, it behooved her to know everything about the case in order to avoid leaning toward the Native Americans' cause.

On the morning that the trial was to begin, a day after completion of jury selection, the lawyer for the defense asked to see her alone in her chambers before the session began, but she refused, sending word that she would see both attorneys ten minutes before court convened. The defense lawyer had a reputation for toughness, but he'd better not let her see it; he'd find that she had the upper hand.

The lawyer for the citizens presented records for burials predating the American Revolution and witness after witness who related oral histories of the burials of their ancestors in that site and beneath Albemarle Gates. Most shed silent tears as they spoke, and she noticed that many in the audience also cried. Brown and Worley presented what appeared on the surface to be an airtight case, pointing to the need for housing at a fair price and for the continued development of a town once thought to be dying.

“Have you reached a verdict?” she asked jury fore-woman Reba Hollings—the second friend she'd made in Queenstown—on the sixth day of the trial.